


Evermore

by ladylapislazuli



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Falling In Love, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:02:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24924313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladylapislazuli/pseuds/ladylapislazuli
Summary: Sylvain doesn’t believe in love. But somehow, love takes him anyway.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 30
Kudos: 231





	Evermore

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNINGS: Mental health issues (Sylvain and Dimitri duo-queue).

Life plays cruel jokes sometimes.

Sylvain knows it. He’s known it for years, though he tries not to let it get him down. He keeps moving, keeps his head up, keeps on smiling. Distracts himself with life’s many pleasures, rather than dwell on the bad.

Life’s cruel, though. And Sylvain forgets, sometimes, exactly how cruel life can be.

Sylvain falls in love, and it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to him.

\- - -

“What do you think, Sylvain?” Dimitri asks. Again and again, over and over, across days and weeks and months after the end of the war.

It makes sense. Sylvain is the Margrave Gautier, now. He is, technically, one of Dimitri’s advisors, but it’s not like he hasn’t tried to shirk the responsibility.

He shrugs. He grunts. He agrees with whatever Felix said, though he re-words it in a more palatable fashion. He smiles winningly, and runs a hand through his hair, and says something glib that makes half the table want to smack him.

But Dimitri keeps asking him. Every time, without fail, Dimitri asks what Sylvain thinks.

Sylvain doesn’t want to think.

“Sorry to disturb you, Your Majesty,” Sylvain says, leaning against the doorframe into Dimitri’s office. Smiling, because he always does. “I was hoping for a quick word.”

“Of course,” Dimitri says. He sets down his quill, running a hand over his face. Tired.

Tired is good, in a way. Tired is much less… unnerving than any of the other things Dimitri can be.

“So, about all these meetings. I don’t know if I’m the right man to be sitting on your left, so to speak,” Sylvain says. “And hey, don’t get me wrong, I’m flattered. But I’ve got other things on my plate, and you’ve got a kingdom to think about.”

He’s hoping to make this quick. But Dimitri studies him, gaze heavy. Sets down his quill. “I see.”

Quiet, to the point. Betraying nothing. Giving Sylvain very little to work with.

Dimitri’s a proper king, these days. Stoic and austere, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that’s all he is. A king sitting on his iron-wrought throne, passing judgment with a just, steady hand. Never smiling, never faltering. Thoughts as heavy as the weight of his crown.

That’s not all Dimitri is. Sylvain remembers.

“If you want advice on how to do well with the ladies, I’m your man,” Sylvain tries. “But all this talk of facts and figures… eh. It’s not really my style. I’ll fight at your side whenever you need me, but my time would be better spent in Gautier.”

Dimitri has the kind of gaze that makes it hard not to squirm. “Please, come in. Sit down.”

Sylvain sits. Crosses his ankle over his thigh, sprawling out in a way that usually makes someone smack him, for it’s hardly the way to sit before his king. Not defiance – but not polite, either.

Rank is nothing. Sylvain will play his part, to a point, but it means nothing. Crest, blood, rank – they all amount to nothing in the end.

“You wish to leave the Council?” Dimitri asks. Utterly still. His single eye fixed on Sylvain’s face.

“I wasn’t made to be a Councillor. I haven’t got the head for it, honestly.”

“You are too modest.”

“First time I’ve heard that one. You’re too kind, your Majesty.” Sylvain is grinning. Charming, he thinks, but Dimitri just looks at him, and Sylvain can’t tell what he’s thinking.

He and Dimitri don’t spend a lot of time together. They’ve known each other for so many years, but they’ve never been close. Now, Dimitri is…

Well.

“If you wish to go, of course I will not stop you,” Dimitri says. The corners of his mouth twist down, and at last he looks away. Breaks eye contact, and lets Sylvain breathe. “I understand if you are… discomfited by working so closely with me. But please know your advice is invaluable to me, Sylvain. I am honoured by your presence on my Council.”

Still earnest, even after all these years. Painfully so, older as he is. Darker as he’s become.

“Well,” Sylvain hedges.

Later, Sylvain will recognise this as a turning point in his life. The moment where everything hangs in the balance, inconsequential as it seems, as ordinary as today may be.

 _One more month_ , he thinks. And in doing so, he seals his fate.

\- - -

Sylvain doesn’t believe in love.

He’s never known love that came without a price. He doesn’t begrudge it. Every human exchange is a matter of mutual benefit - when a person places a coin in a beggar’s cup, they receive a thrill for their own kindness, a happy moment of self-congratulation in return for their generosity.

It’s not a bad thing, necessarily. People help each other, care for each other, because it’s mutually beneficial.

Sylvain knows what he is. He isn’t ashamed of it – he’s had many passions in his life, many flings, and always to mutual benefit. But he’s always known about the strings. Always known about the price attached, silent and unspoken, in holding someone in his arms, taking them to his bed.

Love isn’t like it is in the stories. It’s strong, but fleeting. A soaring high, followed more often than not by a crushing low. Transient, not stable.

Sylvain doesn’t believe in love. But somehow, love takes him anyway.

\- - -

“How are you, Sylvain?” Dimitri asks. Again and again, every time they meet. Not just a polite necessity – Dimitri leans in. Looks at Sylvain with that intense blue eye of his, as though he is seeing into Sylvain’s soul.

Dimitri’s a lot. Too intense, and Sylvain always looks away. Smiles, and jokes, and occasionally says something just suggestive enough that Dimitri’s nose will wrinkle. Still a prude, after all this time, and Sylvain’s crudeness always makes Dimitri pull away.

But Dimitri comes back. Keeps asking, every time. Asking, like it actually _means_ something.

Sylvain isn’t special. He knows Dimitri is equally as focused and attentive with everyone he speaks to. Knows he leans in, looking into people’s hearts and minds with that single blue eye of his, taking every word out of their mouth with utmost seriousness, even if it’s not worth listening to.

Dimitri listens. Intently, to everything and everyone. Gives them his time and energy and intensity. Gives everyone he knows the chance to bask, even for a little while, in the breathless, heart-pounding glory of his total attention. Saviour king, tempest king, the most powerful man on the continent – looking so intently at _you_.

Sylvain’s not special. But Dimitri keeps asking, with questions nobody bothers to put to Sylvain anymore. Keeps asking, even though Sylvain never really answers. Keeps asking, and it tricks Sylvain, somehow. Makes him feel special anyway.

“I _want_ to know, Sylvain,” Dimitri tells him one day. “It… it matters to me. How you are.” A short, husky laugh. Dimitri’s gaze flicking away, strangely bashful. “You’ve been by my side all this time.”

He is still so earnest. Still so… simple-minded. Despite the jagged scars marring his face, spidering out from beneath his eye patch. A shadow of the darkness that dwells beneath Dimitri’s carefully constrained exterior.

Sylvain remembers.

And the thing is, Sylvain _hasn’t_ been by his side, not really. He’s tagged along, but that’s not the same. He didn’t come here for Dimitri. He didn’t fight for Dimitri. If he’d died, it wouldn’t have been for Dimitri.

“Sure thing,” he says anyway. Part dismissal, part lie, because it’s never been _sure_.

They’ve known each other for so long - a friendship born of proximity, necessity. They’re not close. Never have been. Never will be.

But Dimitri keeps asking. And Sylvain doesn’t understand why he keeps coming back here. Why he sits in Dimitri’s breathless, awful intensity. But he does, every time, his heart beating just a little too fast in his chest.

\- - -

Sylvain has never thought of Dimitri in a romantic light.

Dimitri and Felix were always younger. Two little boys following Sylvain about with their snotty noses and small-boy games (never mind that Sylvain, in truth, wasn’t much bigger). Then Dimitri was the perfect prince, uptight and priggish, seemingly incapable of having fun. Too lanky, too blond, too _dull_ to catch Sylvain’s attention.

Except for when he got angry. It happened rarely, because Dimitri was too closed-off to lose his temper often. But it caught Sylvain’s attention.

Sylvain is no stranger to anger. But even as boys, there was something about that temper that Sylvain didn’t like.

Sylvain stayed away. Knew he was right to when he got a look at Dimitri – _Prince_ Dimitri, returned to them at last - and where they were expecting a leader they got something else entirely. A man stinking of blood and madness, all fury and vengeance. Snarling, barely speaking. Barely capable of speech.

Sylvain walked into the Cathedral, once, in the dead of night. Found Dimitri in amongst the rubble, ranting and raving to people who weren’t there. Dimitri looked at him, his remaining eye blank, lips curled back in an animalistic snarl.

Sylvain wasn’t frightened of him, because Sylvain isn’t an easily frightened man. But that’s not to say Dimitri wasn’t frightening.

\- - -

“Is this right, Sylvain?” Dimitri asks. Brow furrowed, gloved hands tapping at the arms of his chair. “Is it fair?”

Dimitri asks over and over, again and again, like Sylvain’s supposed to know. Like he’s in a position to judge the people brought before the king. Like Sylvain can decree innocent or guilty, right or wrong. Like there’s such a thing as justice in the first place.

Dimitri asks Sylvain about a lot of things – about new legislation, and new laws, and new ideas. Dimitri is steering the nation down a different path, one untried by his predecessors. Trying to find a way to level the field, to right the wrongs of the past, to make the world _fair_.

The world isn’t fair. It never will be, and Dimitri should know that better than anyone. He took his throne in blood and grief and anger. Took it in dualities – barbarity and nobility, cruelty and mercy, honourable righteousness and bloodthirsty revenge. The saviour king – so good, so great – but just as he put an end to the Empire’s brutality so too did he crush innocence beneath his own boot.

Dimitri knows this. Sylvain sees it in the lines on his face, the hollowness in his single remaining eye.

“What do you think of this?” Dimitri asks, pushing a sheet of paper across the table.

They are in his office again. Their usual meeting place – their only. King and margrave, formal and restrained. But Dimitri’s hair is messy, here at the end of the day. He has abandoned his heavy layers, stripped down to his shirtsleeves. The firelight plays across his features, shifting, changing him from one moment to the next.

“Felix thinks these new measures are too soft,” Dimitri says, his lips twisting. “And I certainly want to deter banditry, but I…”

He scrubs his hands over his face. Still gloved, even now. Always gloved, always covered. Dimitri has always been like that. Oddly shy of his body, his shirts buttoned to the very top. Always armoured, even if only by supple leather and the drape of cotton over his shoulders.

Their hands brush, sometimes. Sylvain’s bare fingers against leather, always leather. It’s been years since he touched Dimitri’s skin.

“Being too punitive and too lenient can both cause trouble,” Sylvain says. He speaks quietly, but it is still too loud in the stillness of Dimitri’s office. “This seems like a good middle ground.”

It’s not much of an opinion. _Do whatever_ , Sylvain wants to say, for all the difference it will make. History is a funny thing, and the lines between fact and fiction so easily blurred.

Sylvain knows. It’s proclaimed all over the continent that Edelgard was a villain. A cruel tyrant, rightfully defeated by King Dimitri, the saviour of the people. It is said she brought nothing but desolation, waged bloody war without mercy or reason, clawing for power and nothing else.

But Sylvain remembers. Remembers her as she was in their school days, tiny and proper. He remembers her falling off a horse, and spilling food into her lap, and having an odd little sneezing fit that she got unaccountably embarrassed by. Remembers her during the war, their eyes meeting across the battlefield. She was blazing, righteous. Burning with the strength of her ideals, and Sylvain has never understood that part, but he understands _people_. Understood her.

Edelgard chose her path, but she wasn’t evil. She was just human, whole and complete. Human, with all the good and evil inside her that being so entails, her sadness etched into every line of her face. As full of light and dark as Dimitri himself. So what is justice? Sylvain was on the winning side - a flip of a coin, a roll of the dice, a twist of the hand of fate - and he still doesn’t know.

Sylvain’s heartbeat is unsteady. He stares at his hands. Says to Dimitri, “Why are you asking me?”

Dimitri doesn’t reply. It takes Sylvain a moment to look up again. A moment to take him in, to recognise the man before him, because he is so changeable. Day to day. Moment to moment. Dimitri is a lot of things, and memory never captures him right.

This time Dimitri is soft. Fair skin bathed in the golden glow of the fire. His lips are curved upwards – sweet, melancholy – and his hair is like the finest silk. Like this, here and now, Sylvain could believe Dimitri has always been soft.

Dimitri isn’t. Dimitri hasn’t. Sylvain remembers – never forgets, never.

“You always bring me a new perspective,” Dimitri murmurs.

Sylvain does not understand why he feels the need to look away. Why that statement hurts him, a sharp ache in his chest. He scoffs, laughs, rubs his head. Tries to play it off.

Dimitri just leans closer. Messy hair bisecting his blue, blue eye.

“Truly, Sylvain. I am grateful for your counsel. I fear I would be quite lost without you.”

A shudder. A stutter in the rhythm of Sylvain’s heart, eyes flashing up unbidden. And there is Dimitri. Smiling that strange smile of his, tragic, disarming. The firelight playing along the lines of his throat, along his jawline, over his lips.

Does Dimitri know? Does he know how he looks? The power he wields with a simple tilt of his head?

Dimitri is half light, half shadow. Know or not, he is dangerous either way.

“It’s getting late. We should really call it a night,” Sylvain says, stomach churning, heart racing with a rhythm he dare not examine. He does not otherwise reply.

Dimitri’s eye lowers, lashes fluttering along his cheekbone. “Of course. My apologies for keeping you.”

Simple, easy as that. No argument, no objection. Dimitri releases Sylvain without question, frees him from the heavy weight of his attention.

Sylvain is not free. His heart beats its cruel, relentless beat. His treacherous fingers ache to brush the hair from Dimitri’s face, tilt his chin back up so that Sylvain may drown in the blue of his eye.

Sylvain goes. But he’s already far too late.

\- - -

Sylvain doesn’t get attached to people easily.

He is fleeting, a fly-by-night. He makes no apology for it. He likes people, likes them a lot, but he never feels the need to stick around. The important ones usually chase him down anyway. Felix. Ingrid. Mercedes. Anyone who doesn’t can’t have been that important in the first place.

That’s who Sylvain is. _What_ he is, at his core. He fought a war he didn’t believe in, for ideals he didn’t hold, for a kingdom and a nation rotten at the core. Fought for the lesser of two evils, which is no honour at all.

He didn’t follow Dimitri. Kept well away from the roving, snarling warrior. Kept away from the penitent prince, whose sins kept his head bowed and face shuttered with grief. Kept away from the newly-crowned king, who raised a hand to greet the cheers of his people only to be sick in a pot when he stepped off the podium.

Sylvain kept away. Disloyal, untethered, free. But something changed. Something not of his own making. Something deep within his fickle heart shifted, and Sylvain cannot set it to rights.

Dimitri is a complicated man. Changeable, unpredictable. A hassle. Sometimes he greets Sylvain with a smile. Sometimes with vague distance, as though Dimitri is not entirely there. Sometimes…

Sometimes. Dimitri is a lot of things. Too many. Too _much_.

But Sylvain keeps coming back. Like a dog with a collar around his neck, at heel before he is issued the command. Needing something he can’t put a name to, changed in ways he can’t quantify.

Sylvain doesn’t get attached to people easily. He’s never been in love – it’s a waste of time, childish, fruitless. He doesn’t want it. Doesn’t need it.

The world is cruel. And in the cruellest twist of all, Sylvain’s heart, once won, is won for good.

\- - -

“What do you want, Sylvain?”

The question is a new one. Jerks Sylvain from his reverie, from his familiar seat in front of Dimitri’s desk.

Dimitri is studying him. Head tilted, brow furrowed. Gloved fingers resting just beneath his chin, shifting in an idle caress, as though he has quite forgotten they are there.

Sylvain wants a lot of things. Too many to list. Too many for even him to understand.

_What do you want?_

Earnest, intense. Dimitri leaning forward in his chair, catching Sylvain in his intensity. Ensnaring him, drawing him in. Caging him with nothing but his praise and his ever-changing beauty.

“I don’t want anything.” A shake of Sylvain’s head. An idle flick of his fingers. Dismissive, even playful.

 _Liar_.

“You seem… guarded, of late,” Dimitri says. “And you have been doing a great deal of work on my behalf, far more than your share. I should like to repay you, if I can.”

Sylvain is a wicked man. His mind conjures something coy in the curve of Dimitri’s smile, something brazen in the curve of his neck, the shift of his shoulders as he leans in further still. Warm, handsome, desirable. And if that were all he was, Sylvain would take his pleasure and be done with it.

But he isn’t. It’s not. He doesn’t yearn and swoon after Dimitri. Doesn’t flirt or flatter. Doesn’t spend every waking moment thinking of him until Sylvain can satisfy his want and go his own way, forgetting him as quickly as he desired him.

This is different. Deeper, insidious. Sylvain can’t claw it out.

“You’re the king. I’m just lending a hand where I can,” he says. Smiling, always smiling. No matter what he feels.

Dimitri considers him, and the weight of his gaze is so heavy. Maddening, intoxicating, dangerous. Too much. Everything that keeps Sylvain coming back, and back, and back again.

Something in Sylvain is broken. Because Dimitri is a man of a thousand things. Dangerous in a way that makes Sylvain’s heart beat faster and faster. Dangerous because Dimitri is as violent as he is fragile, as beautiful as he is monstrous, as mad as he is sane. Dangerous, and it only makes Sylvain love him all the more.

Love him. Sylvain loves him. Didn’t want to – does it anyway.

Dimitri’s expression firms. Unhappy with Sylvain’s answer. “You are too modest, Sylvain, truly.”

Dimitri is nothing, _has_ nothing. Sylvain doesn’t care for his title, or his Crest, or his power. He wants none of it. Wants out of courtly life, out of the brutal, faithless hierarchy that brings nothing but pain, tearing families apart and stomping upon those who will not concede to its rules. Wants to spend his days drinking and flirting and revelling in the meaninglessness of it all, because there’s a joyful freedom in the knowledge that nothing truly matters. He wants to cast off the shackles of his upbringing, release himself from the lies he was raised on.

Life is cruel. Dimitri is just a man, and not a wholly good one either. He has nothing Sylvain wants – _is_ everything Sylvain wants. A distinction as difficult and contradictory as the man himself.

Sylvain loves him. Can’t leave. He can’t leave him.

Or perhaps, more accurately, he can’t let Dimitri go.

He shuts his eyes. In grief, in penitence, in resignation.

“Sylvain?”

He opens them again. Smiles, because that is his way. And this time it is Sylvain who leans in close, right into Dimitri’s space. Breathing him in, feeling the warmth radiating from his body. Covered, concealed, hidden away. Not a man meant to be touchable, or made to be touched. Sylvain reaches for him anyway. Takes that gloved hand – always gloved – in his own.

Dimitri goes still. As unpredictable in this as in everything else. Frozen, wary, watchful. His very being is a chain around Sylvain’s neck.

“Ask me again,” Sylvain says, because this, at least, he is good at. _Ask me what I want_.

Easy, cliché, familiar. A dance Sylvain has danced a thousand times before. A pretty line, meaningless in its predictability.

Terrifying all the same. Because this is Dimitri. And when Dimitri asks again – obedient, for all the many things he is and can be - Sylvain’s answer will be simple. An old story, told through all the ages, told a thousand times before.

New. Because this is Dimitri. And Sylvain’s answer will be _you._

**Author's Note:**

> I'm @ladylapisxx on Twitter, come say hi! :)


End file.
